This was in Brampton. Middle of the day 3 black males not drunk. I put my helmet on thinking
i was gonna have to give the guy beside me a head butt. An older guy here at work says
The only reason I didn't get mugged was because I showed no intimidation. I was in a bad mood at the time
It sounds like an attempted mugging, and they were gauging:
a) Their own ballz to go through with it. If they met with no resistence they propably would have followed through
b) If you hand over your keys, they might have banked on a technicallity that you let them have it, rather than forcibly mugged or explicitly threatened.
I was mugged by this approach once, which then turned violent when they felt they could follow through with it. I had another friend mugged for smokes in a similar fashion. They were quite upset he lied to them about not having smokes and slashed up his face with a broken bottle. This technique of mugging allows a gradual build up of "bravery" on their part, rather than an all or nothing approach which may cause them to rethink before initiating. But once your "in the moment", their adrenaline can take over. If you shrink in that type of situation they will mug you! If you bend and had over your stuff without an explicit threat, they will likely not face severe penalties either.
My mugging started with: "nice hat, where did you get it? Nice shoes too, can I have them?". The minute I baulked at such a silly question, I noticed the group circle me and instantly their bravado was upped several notches. I was caught off guard by the instant ratcheting of severity, as well as out flanked before I even had time to realize I was now in the middle of a mugging.
This tactic allows them to get real close while leaving your defences low, or delayed.
You gotta be like Bourne in these situations. Every man is a potential threat, and you should be running exit scenarios. Three men get out of a car and approach you....that's an instant threat alert, and be mindful of the worst scenario and prepare your exit strategy.
You played off a little too calm, but it seems to have worked. It's a win in my book! It forced their hand too, they either had to take a massive step up to indicate the threat level they intended, or be explicit (which risked serious charges), and likely they lacked the ballz or resolve to carry it out. Basically you called their bluff.
I also had a 13 year old kid on Queen try to mug me an my 18 year buddy at "gun point" on time using this tactic. He technically didn't pull the gun on us, but showed it holstered in his belt (rapper style). Retard was walking backwards (putting himself on terrible footing), and was 6" shorter than us. He was clearly out-manned, out muscled, and out footed, which led me to believe (after the fact) he had an extraordinarily high level of confidence, quite possible due to the rush of carrying a real gun. At the time, my buddy and I were so shocked by how absurd this attempted mugging was we actually laughed the kid off and told him to piss off and started sarcastically responding to him. It was only later that we rethought it might have been real and the kid was "testing" himself and his resolve as well as his potential victims. That situation ended with him telling us (after looking around, presumably at the masses of people around on Queen and John), "you're lucky there are so many people around this time". Dumb *** picked the situation so I hardly think we were lucky....it's not like the masses of people in broad day light just showed up!
To me, these types of scenarios sound like the beginnings of theft and thieves.
